In the lecture on this topic, Scott Klemmer – an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego – started off by explaining that degree of prototype fidelity is likely to evolve over time (see Fig. 1 below). One might start with a simple drawing on a piece of paper and eventually create a full-fledged clickable prototype. The goal, however, remains the same: to get quick feedback on an idea or concept. Prototyping is a great way to create and to compare alternatives. The idea is not to create pixel perfect designs but instead to rapidly create a number of designs that one can quickly evaluate and compare.

In the lecture, Scott outlined the following prototyping techniques to get quick feedback:

Storyboarding – The main purpose of storyboarding, as Scott pointed out, is to focus on the task that the user interface (‘UI’) is going to support. The temptation is often to jump into sketching a user interface straight away, but there’s a lot of value in taking a step a back to concentrate first on what the UI will help the user to accomplish. Ultimately, one can look at storyboards as a communication tool that will help to convey flow and ideas. Scott provided a good outline of both the objectives and benefits of storyboarding, which I’ve copied in Fig. 2 below.

Paper prototyping –Paper prototyping is a quick and easy way to figure out the UI at an early stage. One can use paper prototypes to quickly test multiple prototypes simultaneously, even getting the users involved in modifying these prototypes. Scott also provided some practical tips and tricks with regard to doing paper prototypes (see Fig. 3 below).

Digital mockups – Naturally, with digital mockups the fidelity is likely to be a lot higher compared to storyboards or paper prototypes. However, this also means that creating digital mockups can be much more time consuming. I’ve got good experiences with observing users play with clickable prototypes or letting them complete specific tasks through the mockup, but this approach often requires a lot more planning and resource compared to other rapid prototyping techniques mentioned above.

Main learning point: I guess the main thing I learned from people like Scott Klemmer and Bill Buxton (see Fig. 4 below) is that with rapid prototyping the level of fidelity hardly matters. If anything, prototypes can serve as great communication and learning tools. Whether the goal is to quickly compare a number of alternatives or to get feedback on a particular idea, prototypes can really help in fleshing something out and getting rapid (user) feedback.